Workshop
Held in conjunction with PODC 2016
The recent global interest in cryptocurrencies was triggered by the rise of Bitcoin, which introduced a public ledger called the blockchain to record the history of its transactions. Bitcoin maintains its blockchain through a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptographic protocol that works without any trusted central authority, but it assumes (at least) that a majority of the computing power in the system is held by honest nodes. Cryptographic techniques ensure the integrity of all transactions in the distributed ledger and new entries are appended through a consensus protocol. Many alternative cryptocurrencies have introduced variations of Bitcoin and proposed alternative designs for consensus ledgers. Novel protocols, known as "smart contracts", are constructed on top of the blockchain, achieving guarantees that were not possible before. Today many financial institutions see the disruptive power of this technology and regard it as a promising alternative to their established business practices, not depending on centralized control, eliminating intermediaries, and enabling new businesses.
Several consensus mechanisms are currently under investigation: On the one hand, Bitcoin's consensus protocol, called "Nakamoto consensus", allows anonymous nodes to participate based on a "proof-of-work". On the other hand, traditional Byzantine consensus and BFT protocols play a role in settings where all nodes are known to each other. Many other systems have been proposed and lie somewhere between these extremes. Distributed knowledge, consistency, and reaching consensus among selfish and mutually distrusting nodes are core topics in the theory and practice of distributed computing. Hence, the popularity of decentralized cryptocurrencies and consensus ledgers creates a unique opportunity for the field to explore this nascent domain and to influence it.
This workshop aims at discussing questions of consistency, concurrency, distributed knowledge, integrity, and reaching consensus in the context of cryptocurrencies and consensus ledgers. The workshop solicits submissions describing current work addressing decentralized cryptocurrencies and consensus ledgers, including analytical results, work on systems, and/or position papers.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to
Submissions should be written in English, formatted in single-column letter-sized or A4-sized format, and prepared as a PDF file. Submissions have to include: a title, authors' name and affiliation, and an abstract of up to four pages; additional material may be added in an optional appendix. Papers must be submitted electronically.
The submission deadline is past.
Final papers will be available to participants electronically during the workshop. In order to facilitate resubmission to more formal venues, no archival proceedings will be published. Authors will have the option to upload the final version of their papers on the workshop website.
| Submission deadline | 25 May 2016 AoE (UTC-12) | ||||||
| Acceptance notification | 13 June 2016 | ||||||
| Workshop | 25 July 2016 |
Christian Cachin, IBM Research – Zurich, Switzerland
Elli Androulaki, IBM Research – Zurich, Switzerland
Joseph Bonneau, Stanford University, USA
Christian Decker, ETH Zürich
Juan A. Garay, Yahoo Labs, USA
Seth Gilbert, National University of Singapore
Aggelos Kiayias, University of Athens
Marko Vukolić, IBM Research – Zurich, Switzerland
Ittay Eyal, Cornell University, USA
Aniket Kate, Purdue University, USA
Sarah Meiklejohn, University College London, UK
Aviv Zohar, Hebrew University, Israel
| 8:45 - 9:00 | Welcome |
| 9:00 - 10:00 | Session 1 - Invited talks Aviv Zohar (Hebrew University) Ittay Eyal (Cornell University) |
| 10:00 - 10:30 | Coffee break |
| 10:30 - 12:00 | Session 2 - Contributed talks Enhancing Accountability and Trust in Distributed Ledgers A Blockchain Based on Gossip? -- A Position Paper Hybrid Consensus: Scalable Permissionless Consensus Architecture of the Hyperledger Blockchain Fabric |
| 12:00 - 13:30 | Lunch break |
| 13:30 - 15:00 | Session 3 - Invited talks Sarah Meiklejohn (University College London) Contributed talk Efficient Asynchronous Atomic Broadcast |
| 15:00 - 15:30 | Coffee break |
| 15:30 - 16:45 | Session 4 - Contributed talks BVP: Byzantine Vertical Paxos Extending Existing Blockchains with Virtualchain | Slides On the Danger of Private Blockchains |
| 16:45 | Final discussion and dlosing |
The workshop takes place in connection with the PODC 2016 conference.
For registration please use the PODC website and register for the workshop day July 25 or for PODC+Workshops. Please note that the registration fees increase as the event date approaches.
The workshop will be held in downtown Chicago at the Corboy Law Center of Loyola University (Water Tower Campus).
| Address | 25 East Pearson Street Chicago |
| Room | 322 CLC |